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How I got interested in Oculus Rift?

I can’t say I’m a huge gamer. I do enjoy playing games though. But when it comes to innovative *HCI devices, I’m very enthusiastic. That’s how I got really curious about experience offered by Oculus Rift, a total new way to experience reality, in a virtual world.

Curiosity alone was not alone for me to buy a Rift though. So I postponed buying a Rift for some time.

I’m building and flying custom multicopters. I was using a monitor to display camera feed from my quadcopter. It is nowhere near as immersive as flying it with a video glass. So I realized I needed a video glass to fly it *FPV.

FPV glasses cost around 150-300 $ and the highest *FOV is only 40 degrees. Compare that with 110 degrees FOV of Oculus Rift and 300 $ price.

It would be plain stupid to invest in FPV glasses. So it was now clear that I needed a Rift. It could serve me as FPV glasses, Gaming Goggles and for all other cool things you can do with a Rift; like watching a 3D movie.

Maker’s Dilemma : Buy or Build?

As a maker, you’ve got two options to acquire a new gadget. You can just buy it, or you can build it from scratch!

There has been a huge increase in demand for smart watches in last couple years. There are many options in the market, yet there is no open source alternative, neither any initiative. I always loved open-source software & hardware thus i decided to turn my smart watch project into an initiative for creating a smart watch alternative for all the other options out there in the market.

Both software & hardware design is very primitive so far but I am totally sure it is not far that we have fully functioning smart watches on our wrists that we can hack, modify & re-design for our every need.

Imagine having your computer, smart phone and your tablet on your wrist, SmartWatch is more than that because it packs all that computing power into a wristwatch form that you can actually wear in daily life. It is a dream waiting to become reality. Let’s make it!

Hi everybody,
If your one and only workstation is a 3~ kgs weighing laptop , you might want to consider buying a netbook for meetings etc.. As i’m currently a student and a freelance programmer , I’m facing lots of situations where i need to carry my laptop around. So i thought it would be a good idea to have a smaller laptop -a netbook- for portability purposes. Later on , with the uprise in the popularity of tablets , a new interest has flourished. And combining the need for a netbook and interest in tablet , i decided to buy a netvertible. After some research i found some fine and inexpensive options. At first i was thinking about buying an ASUS T101MT netvertible ( click for specs ) but it was to thick and bulky. There has been other options i have considered in the meanwhile , but to keep short , i will skip that part.
Then i found Acer Iconia W500 tablet. It has a dock-keyboard , comes with Windows 7 pre-installed , 2GB RAM , Multi-touch up to 4 fingers , 1280*800p , back & front camera etc. ( click for more of specs ) , it was perfect , exactly matching my needs. Beyond all that specs it is very portable.
I bought an Acer Iconia W500 last new year’s day. I have used it with its preinstalled O.S. – windows 7 – for first month. I was pretty happy with it. Acer had solved right-click problem on Windows pretty well. Double tapping with a secondary finger was registered as right click – one thing i’m missing now on Windows 8. On Windows 8 you have to keep your finger touching for a while to right click and it’s pretty annoying IMHO. That’s not only problem you will encounter after switching to Windows 8. W8 lacks a wireless manager , which means you will be unable delete a connection , create adhoc wireless hotspot , change settings of a connection etc.. Connectify doesn’t work… In short-term it boots up pretty fast but after you install a few software (VLC , Eclipse , Angry Birds , Windows Surface Touch Pack , World of Goo , Adobe Reader , WampServer , Notepad++ … that’s all i have now ) , it becomes extremely slow to boot up and sometimes gets stuck at logon screen. So it’s a develop-preview why i’m talking about all these problems i have faced. I’m telling these , because there are lots of people on discussion boards telling people that Windows 8 is totally usable on this tablet for daily usage. My effort here is only to balance that misinformation. Anyway , today i’m reinstalling Windows 7 after 2 months of use…I will miss only the responsive keyboard of Windows8 :/

So far we have talked about Windows 8… Lets talk about Android-x86. Because its development is non-profit and voluntary , i wont be commenting harshly. First of all i have to share my appreciation for their work on porting android to x86 devices.

Last week i updated to ICS-x86 amd brazos RC1 build. Even though it improved a lot , there are still some issues.
Here is a list of problems i have encountered:

Other than these problems android runs pretty smooth with last release. But there is something i should notify you , you cant play any of those 3D fancy graphical games NFS Shift , GTA3 etc. , %99 of 3D games and apps doesnt work on android-x86 due to fact that those apps and games were compiled with ARM binary libraries. And when you discard those from market you are pretty much left with crappy apps , notetaking , todo , soundboard apps etc. pretty much like chrome webstore. So even though you install android-x86 i’m pretty sure you will stick with Windows.

Lately , my mind has become really fuzzy about this three subjects. So fuzzy that i dont know what are the questions i should pursue for a solution. Everything gets so complicated when your only personal interest & hobby in your life overlaps with your career. Why it gets complicated? To answer this question i should first express the priority of subjects in my point of view.I think Career has the highest priority , because it’s how you are going to make your life.Second is Education because it is deeply connected with the Career and… Personal Interests , even though it is last prior of all , it doesnt mean it is least important. Actually all this subjects are equally important because they all depend on each other. Personal Interests are important because it feeds our motivation and happiness… without motivation or happiness you cant succeed a thing in your life.
So it is , Career the first, Education the second and Personal Interests the third
Most people think it’s great thing to have a career over your personal interest. Yeah , why not right? You are doing what you did in the past just for fun except this time you are getting paid for it. The truth is suprisingly different , at least for me so far…
So the Task = Career + Personal Interest. But the thing is when there is something with an higher priority in equation it shadows all the other. You still know you did something that was once your personal interest but there is something wrong… you dont feel as much happy or succeed. Then you start postponing your personal interests thinking you did enough of it , with that task you did. You keep doing this , after a while… when you try to do that personal interests of yours -lets say a personal tech. project- you start thinking how much profitable is this project etc. that is… my friend… is the point where you lost your one of your personal interest. You cant have fun with it anymore.

Like this:

I’ve been working on a web application project for about a year now.Seven months ago i switched to object-oriented javascript due to complexity of the project.It increased productivity in a way that i can not express with words , you just have to experience it.

As i switched to object oriented javascript i learned some new tricks in javascript that i’ve never needed or used before.One of them was closures.I dont think i’m yet an expert on javascript or its closures but i want to share my experiences with it. I perceive closures as parameterized callback functions that you can pass arguments into the function.

So when it becomes useful you ask?
It becomes very useful when you are using Jquery & OOP javascript together. Let me give you an example:

Content 1

Content 2

Content 3

This will not work as expected because second “this” pointer becomes current $(‘li’) element.
So how you gonna handle it?
You can fix it by editing it to:

$(this).html(obj.counter);

But wait that’s against OOP approach to assume object name is always going to be “obj”.I wish it was just that , but it will also make it impossible to declare and use more than one instance of that class in one document which can be solved by using seperate documents and showing them in one page within iframe elements.But dont you think it is quite unprofessional?

PS:
Some of the JQuery functions such as “.bind()” allows you to pass arguments.In those cases you dont need closures.But those functions are very few , maybe its only “.bind()” function , because it’s only one i know.

I was at Google Chrome DevFest today, it was great in a lot of way , it has been very educating and entertaining in the same time. We’ve been introduced to some of the amazing – yet beta – features of chrome browser. I’ve got to admit that if this features goes mainstream and gets support by more browsers , It is going to change the way we think of the web. The Web might become a whole lot better intuitive & fun experience with this upcoming features. Not only it will change the user experience , but also it will create new possibilities for developers. As an enthusiast Web App. developer , all i can say is that we have to spread the modern browser usage , we’ve got to get more users to upgrade their browsers to one of the modern browsers.It will not only ease the development process but also it will enrich the materials we use to develop web apps and im sure that this will accelerate the innovation in web.

I just got back home from Sakarya. One of the reasons i came back to Istanbul this weekend was a delivery received from Farnell. It was the MSP-EXP430FR5739 Experimenter Board . As soon as i came home , i reach the shipment box and opened it. I was already very excited about this board whole week. This development board is going to be a complete new journey for me after my long journey with the Arduinos… anyway enough with the chit chat

Lets get into some detail… Why i choosed this board?
You might have already noticed my interest in motion-controlled apps & technologies. It was first started with the Nokia Symbian smartphones with built-in accelerometers.I developed two apps for those devices one called AlertMe and the other was nGUN. I also developed some experimental apps too which are not released for public use. I kept experimenting with accelerometers on my N95 with Python s60 on the go. It is fun and very entertaining to play with accelerometers.